Steelers’ Mendenhall Could Be Lost For Playoffs

Added on Jan 02, 2012 by Jack Thurman in

NFL

The Pittsburgh Steelers hoped to be able to advance to the NFL playoffs with a healthy roster and even had a ‘best case scenario’ of giving quarterback Ben Roethlisberger the week off–or at least part of it as he recovers from a high ankle sprain. That wasn’t to be as Roethlisberger was under center for the entire game as Pittsburgh beat Cleveland 13-9 and more problematically may have lost another important offensive weapon as running back Rashard Mendenhall could be out for the season with a knee injury.

Mendenhall is slated to get an MRI on Monday, but the early indications aren’t optimistic with considerable speculation that he may have torn his ACL during Sunday’s win over the Browns. Mendenhall left the stadium on crutches after the game and head coach Mike Tomlin had little positive spin to put on the situation:

“It’s not good, of course, when a guy goes down in open grass and is not touched by anyone Experience tells me that, in general, that’s not good.”

Menhenhall’s status won’t be officially known until he’s examined by doctors on Monday, but Tomlin is expecting the worst:

“You should anticipate that he won’t be participating next week.”

The Steelers didn’t get a lot of breaks heading into the playoffs–since they’re a wild card team they’ll have to go on the road to play the Denver Broncos and Tim Tebow who managed to win the AFC West. Ben Roethlisberger says its important for his team to step up to the challenge:

“Now is the time to go out and play our best football. If you are a great team, you have to win on the road. We’d like to get it together, starting next week. We have not been able to put it all together yet this year, whether because of injury, weather, a lot of factors.”

Safety Ryan Clark added:

“We have a lot of veterans who know what January football is all about. Now’s the time to go play it. We kind of limped in and it would have been huge to get a bye and get guys healthy. Now we have to go and play better on the road. I believe this team can win anywhere.”

The Steelers opened a -9 point NFL betting favorite against Denver with the total set at 37′.